


Something There

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 07:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13184946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Dating the daughter of Sleeping Beauty was the last thing the daughter of Maleficent ever thought would happen when she crossed the sea and came to Auradon. Dating anyone, really, but least of all Princess Audrey. Despite not having anything to compare it to, Mal can't help but feel that something between them is...missing. But when Mal's best friend suddenly makes the big jump from Isle to Auradon...





	Something There

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

“Mal, it’s getting late.”  
  
Mal looked up from her sketchbook, so lost in her own world as she drew under the shade of a tree that she didn’t even realize the sky was beginning to darken with deep reds, oranges, and blues.  
  
“I don’t see why you like sitting out here anyway, it’s always either too windy or too bright and there’s  _definitely_ always bugs out here,” Audrey said with a shudder beside her.  
  
“Well, it’s usually quiet,” Mal smirked.  
  
“I can’t imagine how, what with the insects buzzing in your ear and the birds chirping and twittering.”  
  
“You sure you’re your mother’s daughter?” Mal teased.  
  
“Of course I am,” Audrey vainly flipped her hair back. “Now come on, walk me back to my dorm. The tree will still be here tomorrow.”  
  
“That it will…” Mal sighed, closing her sketchbook and standing up.  
  
There she was, Mal, the feared villainess from the Isle of the Lost, strolling amidst an Auradon sunset with the hand of the most popular girl in school fitted inside hers.  
  
“And don’t forget to come watch me tomorrow Mally, I have cheerleading practice,” Audrey said, squeezing Mal’s hand.  
  
“No, wouldn’t want to forget that,” the VK somewhat muttered. 

How Mal had hated being chosen to live among the do-gooders in Auradon like some kind of social experiment. How Mal hated the daughter of her mother’s worst enemy, with her fake laughs and fake smiles and not-so-passive passive-aggressive tendencies. How Mal hated Prince Ben for volunteering Audrey to be her official Auradon guide, with his nonsensical and uninformed talk of “bridging the gap” and deciding that two girls on opposite sides of history could learn to mend their differences in the spirit of goodness. And how Mal was… _unsure_ when Audrey’s laughs and smiles became less fake when directed at her.  
  
So very unsure and so very lost when Audrey started laying her head on her shoulder and started laying tentative kisses on her cheek. Even more lost when somehow she and Audrey had started dating. Lost, but no longer hating it. How could she hate this? Being shown affection and caring for the first time in her life?  
  
They said goodbye and goodnight at Audrey’s door, Mal still getting used to trying her hand at being the one to make the first move and kiss Audrey first, and then the door was shut. But Mal didn’t return to her own dorm, her feet—as they often seemed to do—unknowingly carried her right to Jay and Carlos’ room, where she always seemed to catch the door when it was unlocked and let herself in. With Carlos at the desk doing his homework and Jay kicked back on the bed watching tv, Mal shuffled over without a word and made herself comfortable at the head of Carlos’ bed. The boys didn’t even react to her presence save for the quick glance as she opened the door, they were so used to her essentially being the dorm’s third roommate.  
  
“…You guys ever feel like there’s something missing here?” she asked.  
  
“Where?” Carlos lifted his head from his notebook.  
  
“Here. In Auradon. At Auradon Prep.”  
  
Jay and Carlos were quiet as they thought it over, until Jay snapped his fingers.  
  
“Magic barrier. Streets full of trash and someone else’s leftovers for breakfast,” he sneered, answering the question of what was missing.  
  
That wasn’t what Mal meant, and they darn well knew it, so she didn’t say anything more. She just folded her arms and indulged in the tv along with Jay until the lateness of the hour sent her back to her own empty bedroom.  
  
With a second tidily made bed that sat unused and untouched until that very next morning, when Ben knocked at her door and greeted her with a bow of the head and an apology for waking her up.  
  
“Mal, this is—”  
  
“Evie!!” Mal gasped, already knowing the blue-haired girl at his side.  
  
“Mal,” Evie smiled brightly, speaking her name like a sigh of relief.  
  
“…You two know each other already?” Ben wondered.  
  
Did Mal know the girl she risked her life for back on The Isle who ended up quickly growing to be the closest friend she ever had? Of course she did.  
  
Where Ben decided Audrey was the perfect fit to be Mal’s Auradon chaperone, he in turn decided Mal was the perfect fit to be Evie’s Auradon chaperone.   
  
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Mal hugged her once Ben had gone, surprising herself at how easy the gesture was, considering the two hadn’t seen each other in months.  
  
“I know. I know!” Evie gushed. “I’m in Auradon, Mal!”  
  
“Ben said he’d start with a few kids before bringing in more, and he really did,” Mal smiled.  
  
“You seem happy,” Evie noted as she settled onto her new bed, remembering how the Mal she’d last seen sliding into a limo was far more Isle than she was Auradon.  
  
The word tripped up Mal. She never considered herself  _un_ happy, but…having “happy” used to describe her seemed like such a strange and out-of-place word choice.  
  
Mal dressed while Evie unpacked, until another knock at the door drew Mal out of the bathroom.  
  
“Morning Mally!” Audrey beamed when the door opened, impeccably dressed as always.  
  
From one impeccable dresser to another, Audrey and Evie’s eyes immediately met from opposite sides of the doorway.  
  
“Who’s this?” Audrey asked.  
  
“This is Evie, from The Isle,” Mal introduced her.  
  
“The Evil Queen’s daughter,” Evie curtsied.  
  
“Evie, this is Audrey, daughter of Phillip and Aurora; my girlfriend.”  
  
If Evie was surprised to see this much of Auradon from her Isle girl, she didn’t show it.

“Nice to meet you,” she said without a hitch.  
  
“Mally, aren’t you coming down to breakfast?” Audrey asked, losing interest in Evie right away.  
  
“Well, yeah, I’m just gonna help Evie get settled in first. Chaperoning and everything, you know,” Mal shrugged.  
  
“Of course I do,” Audrey giggled at Ben’s ways and gave Mal one of her kisses on the cheek. Mal kicked herself for not remembering to give her one first, and then Audrey was gone to wait for her in the dining hall.  
  
Evie was smiling slyly to herself as she folded her shirts.  
  
“The daughter of Sleeping Beauty?” she kept in a laugh.  
  
Mal held up her hand.  
  
“Don’t say it, I already know,” she sighed.  
  
“Do you?” it was harder for Evie to keep the laugh at bay now.  
  
“I know that I missed you,” Mal said, again surprised at herself by how easily the sentiment was expressed.  
  
“I missed you too, M.”  
  
M.  
  
She’d gotten so used to Mally that she’d forgotten “M” was the original.  
  
Turned out Mal had forgotten a lot about Evie, like how she could actually talk to her instead of being relegated to just listening, as was often the case when Audrey was around. How Evie took interest in her artwork and even shared the passion to create with her. How she and Evie also shared that deep bond of life on the Isle of the Lost and how they always related to so much more than Mal and Audrey ever seemed to relate to in Auradon. Audrey was Mal’s girlfriend, she had always just accepted that as a given.  
  
And maybe that was the problem.  
  
She paid extra attention the next time they were at lunch, asking Audrey how her morning was and listening to her talk incessantly about her cheerleading in response. Then she directed the same question to Evie, sitting across from them at the table, who talked excitedly about chemistry class and ended on the exact note that Mal was listening for.  
  
“And how’s your morning going, M?”  
  
She was so busy reveling in the question being directed towards her for once that she forgot to answer.  
  
“…Mal, wake up, it’s like you’re not even here,” Audrey nudged her.  
  
Mal snapped out of it. Apologized. Answered with a bland and generic “My morning’s fine” before going back to listening to Audrey talk about the need for new cheerleading uniforms.  
  
“What’s with the face?” Jay asked a few evenings later when Mal sauntered into the dorm. This time he joined Carlos in homework, and the other boy peered around Mal as she closed the door.  
  
“Where’s Evie?” Carlos asked.  
  
She’d been startled by how easy it was to talk with Evie, but until now she never stopped to marvel at how easy it was to talk with Carlos and Jay. She pulled up another chair at their round center desk, sitting among them. In a broad sense, she answered both questions at once.  
  
“…I don’t think Audrey and I are supposed to be together,” she admitted, to both her friends and herself.  
  
“The daughter of Maleficent and the daughter of Sleeping Beauty? What was your first clue?” Jay took it in stride.  
  
Carlos elbowed him.  
  
“What makes you say that, Mal?”  
  
“Besides the fact that we have nothing in common? Let’s see, we have nothing in common, we couldn’t be more different, we’re complete opposites—am I leaving anything out?” Mal said a little tensely, the discomfort at speaking her feelings catching up to her.  
  
“Well what made you realize this now?” Carlos asked instead. “You and Audrey have been together for four months.”  
  
“New player?” Jay smirked.  
  
“…What?” Mal looked up at him.  
  
“Look, we see the way your face lights up when you’re around Evie,” Jay laughed lightheartedly. “You don’t smile like that for Audrey.”  
  
“You hardly smile for her at all.”  
  
“That’s not true!” Mal quickly said. “Audrey can be funny, and she’s got passion and drive and…”  
  
“…And you really don’t even know that much about her,” Jay finished.  
  
Mal’s eyes were suddenly scared, desperate—the look of a girl falling into unknown territory.  
  
“…You guys, she was the first one to see me as more than just a villain.”  
  
Carlos reached out to put his hand on top of Mal’s, confidently, yet still half-expecting Isle Mal to lash out at him suddenly.  
  
“That doesn’t mean you owe her a relationship,” he firmly said.  
  
“And as self-absorbed as Audrey can be, she wouldn’t want you to be with her just because you feel like you have to be,” Jay wisely added.   
  
“In her own special and sometimes confusing way, Audrey cares about you. She wouldn’t want a one-sided relationship for either of you.”  
  
“But it’s not one-sided!” Mal argued. “It's—”  
  
“It’s just you making excuses because you’re afraid of the change and you’re comfy where you are. But you’re not happy,” Carlos said. “Mal, it’s not called comfortable ever after—it’s called happily ever after.”  
  
“ _You_ were the one who just said you don’t think you and Audrey belong together,” Jay reminded her. “If you don’t think you can be happy with her, then you need to drop this.”  
  
They were right, and Mal knew it.  
  
But that didn’t necessarily mean she liked it.

* * *

Evie too could be found doing homework at the desk when Mal returned to their dorm room.  
  
“…M?” Evie looked up from her textbook, eyes widening slightly. “Hey, you’ve been out forever, where have you been?”  
  
Mal didn’t answer until she found her way to her bed, laying back against the headboard and drawing her knees up to her chest.  
  
“…I broke up with Audrey,” she said the words slowly like she herself had to hear them to believe them.  
  
Evie gasped.  
  
“You  _what??”_ she stood up from the desk, starting for Mal’s bedside. “M, why??”  
  
Mal sighed.  
  
“We just…didn’t fit very well, I guess. It feels like there were a few different reasons. We were too different, we didn’t connect on anything…but mainly? …I like someone else, Evie.”  
  
Evie smiled sympathetically, crawling beside Mal on the bed.  
  
“An easy thing to do in Auradon, huh?”  
  
Mal slowly shook her head.  
  
“…No, this goes back way before Auradon,” she said.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean that…believe it or not, there was someone I trusted back on the Isle of the Lost. Someone I cared about. We would laugh together, find ourselves together in the middle of my mother’s crazy schemes…and when Jay, Carlos and I were sent to Auradon Prep and she got left behind…”  
  
Now Evie understood. So very suddenly.  
  
“…And when she got left behind, she missed her friends terribly,” Evie finished. “…But missed one friend in particular just a little bit more. And when she finally got her chance to come to Auradon, and found her friend dating someone, she was so happy for her…but couldn’t help feel like there was something missing.”  
  
“I felt like there was something missing too!” Mal blurted, before sheepishly catching herself and trying to play along with Evie. “I mean…she noticed. My girl, the one I’m talking about.”  
  
“You mean you, Mal. You already said,” Evie pointed out easily.  
  
“…Oh, I did,” Mal took a deep breath, dancing around it no longer. “Evie, it’s you. It’s you I like, and you I want to be with. Auradon is a place for happily ever afters, and mine is not with Audrey.”  
  
Evie smiled shyly, cutely, looking down at her hands in her lap.  
  
“…You just dumped a princess for me,” she said.  
  
Evie’s smile unwound Mal, let loose the tension resting heavily in her shoulders and coiling around her chest.  
  
“I also almost got myself cursed for you,” she reminded her, a smile of her own starting to peek through.  
  
“How about we lose the dramatic gestures and just date?”   
  
Mal reached over, curling her fingers around Evie’s. She noticed the warmth. The sensation dancing through her skin that almost felt like sparks. Things she hadn’t felt before but was more than excited to get to know and explore.  
  
“…Deal.”


End file.
